An Open Secret: War Criminal Salman Rubs Elbows with Israeli-AIPAC Leaders

Rasa - Away from public relations blitz, Saudi Arabia and Israel are best friends in the Middle East. The two regimes retain an atrocious human rights record and see Iran as their common enemy, and the situation has only deteriorated since their twin wars against Syria and Yemen.

News ID: 437044

Date: 30 March 2018 - 23:02

RNA - After meeting with President Donald Trump last week to reaffirm US military support for Saudi Arabia's brutal assault on Yemen, war criminal Mohammed bin Salman continued his whitewash tour across the country. A peek at the prince's itinerary, leaked to Western media, reveals meetings with top leaders in politics, media, and major industries. His coast-to-coast welcoming committee included up to four previous presidents as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and several newspaper editorial boards. Unsurprisingly, Salman also rubbed elbows with AIPAC and Jewish leaders, as well as the critics of the war his regime is waging against one of the world's poorest countries, causing a horrific humanitarian crisis.

It should be clear enough that this little piece of propaganda by Salman was designed to Disneyfy the autocratic regime of Saudi Arabia as the Magic Kingdom and secure even deeper strategic relations with Israel and the United States – not to mention distract attention from his direct role in causing the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet.

In addition to those meetings, Salman’s itinerary for the trip also included:

Current government officials on Salman’s schedule included CIA director (and nominee for new US Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisor and unofficial Middle East envoy Jared Kushner, national security adviser HR McMaster, and Defense Secretary James Mattis. He also met past luminaries such as Barack Obama, John Kerry, Gen. David Petraeus, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as paying a visit to George W. Bush's Texas ranch. Other notable meets included Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Tim Cook of Apple, and the CEOs of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Uber, the Walt Disney Company, and Lockheed Martin.

The meaning of all this is as simple as possible: the young lad is there to make Americans richer and the world a more unsafe place. Full Stop.

And just when we thought he would then pack up and leave, the Saudi Crown Prince did the once unconceivable thing: He met with the leaders of a number of US Jewish organizations. Salman visited officials from AIPAC, Stand for Israel, the American Jewish Committee, ADL, the Jewish Federation of North America, and others. The visits were revealed in a leaked copy of his itinerary, and were not meant to be publicized by the media.

It’s not just that these groups are Jewish and broadly pro-Israel. Much of the controversy is seen as many of the groups are both involved in the Israeli settlement venture and war crimes against palestinains, illegal under International Law and widely criticized in the Middle East, and are anti-BDS groups. Meaning, the pro-Israel meetings were done broadly for the benefit of the usurper regime of Israel, and how together with the Israelis and the Americans, the Saudis can shape up the Middle East to their liking.

Although Saudi officials remain silent on their underhanded relations with the Zionist regime, which keeps killing Palestinians almost on a daily basis and steals their lands in violation of International Law, their Israeli counterparts have made no efforts to hide their strategic relations and that meetings between the two countries have taken place, with invitations for future visits as well.

For instance, just last week, Israeli Communications Minister Ayoub Kara invited the Saudi's Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh to visit Israel, and two days later, Israel's chief-of-staff Gadi Eizenkot gave the first-ever official interview to Saudi news outlet Elaph, saying that Israel shares intelligence with Saudi Arabia on Iran which is a bastion of resistance against Tel Aviv, Washington, and Riyadh warmongering and regime-change campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

According to Fars News Agency, indeed, the wider significance of this little piece of propaganda by Salman can only be fully understood in conjunction with events in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, where Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States have been working together with their militant proxies to either affect regime change or contain Iran’s growing influence - their common enemy - after it helped the central governments to defeat the death cult of ISIL and its American caliphate in the Levant.

Some might argue Israel cannot be a natural ally for Saudi Arabia, but they have long shared a common enemy: Iran. The two have been working together: close diplomatic cooperation, intelligence sharing and more. Israeli media recently reported that a senior Saudi prince, possibly Salman himself, paid a secret visit to Tel Aviv. The idea of a Saudi-Israeli alliance is therefore deep, perhaps controversial in both countries, but details are starting to leak out.

Such diplomatic coordination and tightened military alliance is dangerous, given that the American-Israeli-Saudi alliance has the potential to trigger a new war in the region. Then again, even more dangerous is the fact that this marriage of convenience will surely create a massive backlash among ordinary Saudis as well. Just like many other Muslims, the ordinary Saudis see Israel as their eternal enemy.

They won’t sit on their hands watching the Crown Prince, who declared war on Iran and prepared Lebanon as the first scene of this war – with Hezbollah as the first target – to tighten a military alliance with Israel at the expense of Palestinians and the rest of the Islamic world. Surely, they will rise up. That day is not far-flung.

847/940